I did my undergraduate work at Miami University in Ohio. My interests in college were my fraternity (Delta Tau Delta), Campus Crusade for Christ, and playing as many sports as possible: softball, basketball, racquetball, squash, golf and now I love doing ½ Marathons, Tri-athlons and playing Fantasy Football.

As I was growing up two things would characterize my life: sports and church. I always dreamed of being a NBA All-star, but I fell short of that goal (you’ll see what I mean when you meet me).

My family always went to church, but it wasn’t until my brother came home from a weekend at a church retreat that I was challenge with the concept that God through Jesus Christ wanted to have a personal relationship with me. What threw my world into some confusion was that my brother came home and claimed to have become a Christian that weekend. That made no sense to me because I thought that we had always been Christians because how we always went to church. So I started asking questions to my mother and others who tried to explain it to me, but it still made no sense.

Then that following summer, I went to a Christian sports camp. There they explained to me that it was my own personal decision to start a relationship with Jesus that would make me a Christian. It wasn’t going to church that made me a Christian any more than I could be a car by sitting in a garage for the next 5 months. Just like you are not married until you make a decision to get married and you say your vows.

That night at camp while lying in bed, I made that commitment (like saying your vows) by saying, “God, I’m a sinner. Please come into my life and give me eternal life that you have promised.”

No fireworks went shooting off into the sky at that moment; no angel came down and touched me on my head. I just knew with all certainty that the God of this universe was in my life and that I had eternal life from that moment on.

Click to see a short video presentation on Steps to Peace with God by the Billy Graham Association. It will tell you, in just a few minutes, those same things I heard at the camp.

Do you think church is boring and irrelevant? I know a place that is anything but. Check out Willow Creek Church with 7 locations around Chicagoland. They have 30,000 people every weekend; you can try it out and remain anonymous in the crowd.